


We're Not Late

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 14:15:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2624822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this Pacific Rim AU, Asami and Korra are Jaeger pilots. Asami has designed her Jaeger, the Electric Ladies, but they've both been told that they are not drift compatible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Not Late

It was night in Hong Kong, and Korra could see the ocean from her window, still now, peaceful, a smooth plane of glass undisturbed by winds or kaiju. 

The Jaeger Program was still new, still trying to figure out how to make bigger and better Jaegers that would be big enough to stop each and every Kaiju. 

Korra bowed her head. Asami was supposed to have been on that think tank, planning and revising and re-envisioning. But she wanted to fight—well, she wanted to be a Jaeger engineer too and sometimes she was, but she’d told Korra that if she didn’t trust her designs enough to pilot them herself, then what did that say about her. Besides, and here she flipped her hair as she bent over her plans and designs, how else would she know where the faults and flaws were?

And Korra thought she’d never loved her as much as she loved her in that moment.

Try outs to find drift compatible partners had been the hardest when Korra thought that it would be the easiest. They paced circles around each other, Korra striking the first blow and Asami taking it. And even though she struck when she had to, it was almost like Asami wasn’t interested in winning the fight while Korra was, was ready to show whoever was watching what she could do and how well she could do it.

When it was over, the newly minted Marshal Stacker Pentecost did not believe they were drift compatible.

"We’re drift compatible," Korra had said, to Pentecost, to Asami, to anyone who’d listen.

Asami put her finger on Korra’s lips and kissed her. “Of course we are. But even if we weren’t, it wouldn’t change my affection for you. It wouldn’t mean anything but what it means—that we’re not drift compatible.”

"It means something more to me," Korra insisted, hands settling on Korra’s waist. "You’re almost done with Ladies Electric—why don’t we test it out and see how it goes? Sparring’s never been your thing—maybe that’s why we didn’t have that—" she made a sound with her mouth, fingers blossoming into an imaginary explosion. 

Marshal Pentecost agreed—reluctantly—to let them try to drift in Asami’s new jaeger, and it was supposed to happen tomorrow but Korra strung too tight with nerves and fear and doubt left her bed to visit the Jaeger, to wait at its feet until Asami found her there in the morning.

The jaeger stood through the gloom, a silent guardian under a sliver of pale moon. Korra stood by its feet, hands smoothing down the metal, painted blue. It matches your eyes, Asami had said, and Korra hadn’t known what to say to that.  

Korra found that Asami was already there, lying on her back, fiddling with the wires or some contraption that Korra didn’t fully understand, grease smudged on her face.

"Hey," she said, softly so she wouldn’t startle Asami.

But Asami didn’t even start. “I was wondering when you’d come down here,” she said.

Korra stretched out beside her, watching Asami work, watching the stars glint overhead. 

The station was so quiet, everybody asleep but them.

After a while, Asami set aside her tools and closed the casing, once more hiding the wires she had been tinkering with. She ran her gloved hands over the metal, biting her lip before she turned her head and looked at Korra properly through her green-lensed goggles.

Her hair spilled out beautifully around her shoulders.

"I think she’s done now," Asami said, a proud small smile around her lips.

"I’m glad," Korra said, folding herself into Asami’s arms as they held each other against the cold, hard ground, against the chill that seeped through their skin.

They accidentally fell asleep under the jaeger, only waking when crews began preparing the bunker for the test of the new jaeger. Korra pulled a still groggy Asami to her feet and, to save time, they got ready together, showering quickly under the thin spray of water, pulling on their flight jumpers, what they wore under the thick-boned suits for comfort and safety, finding each other’s socks for them and their missing boot under the bed.

Machines bolted them into their real suits, and they looked over at each other, nodding encouragingly.

Korra had done this a million times, and she still felt her body jumpy and nervous scrabbling at the close, heavy weight that had been put on her bones. It wasn’t a cage—it was protection—but sometimes the creeping fear, the claustrophobia crept through her skin and Korra looked over at Asami who was already finished and waiting.

They entered the Jaeger together. Asami took the right side, Korra the left.

Nerves crawled through Korra’s skin, running up against the close confines of the suit and spilling all over her, staining every thought, every breath. They were drift compatible—this would prove it once and for all.

But what if they weren’t?

Korra tried to clear her mind the way that Tenzin had taught her. Asami was running the Jaeger through its wakeup sequence, and already it was coming to life around her—parts whirring, limbs shifting.

She remembered the last thing that Pentecost had told the recruits. Don’t be Alice and chase the rabbit.

Don’t hold onto memories.

Don’t hold onto embarrassment or shame.

She looked at her armored hands, and knew they were sweating underneath the hard shell. They stepped into their positions, machinery lowering and forming the connections that would bind Korra and Asami and the Jaeger together.

"Do you trust me?" Asami said. She was smiling. Her eyes eager. She’d made this thing—it was hers, and she knew its every secret and—for a moment, Korra wondered if Asami knew her that well and did it matter that Korra didn’t know the jaeger as well as Asami did.

Korra was still nodding, trying to assure Asami, trying to assure the jaeger, trying to assure herself that everything was fine, everything was going to be fine, when the neural handshake was initiated.

It took Korra by surprise—a whirlwind of emotion that heightened her awareness of Asami by her side.

She wore perfume, something fruity, something vaguely of mango, and Korra’s mouth water, remembering the mango she had shared with Korra the first time they’d met—

Korra thought she heard Asami calling her name and she remembered where they were, the jaeger, the Ladies Electric, and that they couldn’t follow the R.A.B.I.T even if it lead to times where they didn’t live in fear of the ocean, of losing all the ones they held dear—

And that was Asami’s memory because Korra hadn’t lost anyone—she still had Tenzin who wrote her weekly, her mother and father, but Asami had lost her father, and there was a hard shift as Asami raised the jaeger’s fist, electricity sparking from its palm, a design that Korra knew her father had been playing with, one that Asami had perfected—

They walked in step, speaking their intentions even though they were already beginning to anticipate them.

Korra was glad to hear Asami’s voice, the gentle lilt of it anchoring here her to the present, to now, to her and them.

They were dancing, like they were supposed to have gone to the last dance of school but then the first kaiju had attacked and they had never gotten their first dance and Asami’s father had died and that had been a bad time, loss gutting her heart but she had found something in the jaeger’s, and here they were now, the electric heart in their palms pulsing with power and something else until they heard someone tell them they were done, to shut her down, it was time to go home.

The neural handshake lifted and it left Korra breathless, lonely, but when she looked to the side, Asami was there, her head bowed, her hair curtaining her face until she also turned her head. “I told you,” she said. “We are drift compatible.” 


End file.
